The Bordeaux Betrayal wcm-3

by Ellen Crosby

  “Ma belle,” he said, looking pleased with himself. “Certainly not ‘old.’”

  I laughed. “Certainly not. You still haven’t told me the reason for this visit. Not that you need one.”

  He folded his hands in his lap. “Eh, bien, a reunion. Les vieux amis. My colleagues from the war.”

  He meant World War II.

  “The colleagues you worked with on the Marshall Plan?” I said.

  The plan had been the brainchild of Secretary of State George C. Marshall back in 1947, a massive humanitarian aid project conceived to help a shattered Europe rebuild after the devastation of the war. The stipulation for receiving aid, however, was that the European countries needed to draw up a unified plan for how they would use the money—acting as a single economic entity rather than a fractured group of nations. Pépé had been the lead member of the French delegation and one of the major European architects in forging the union the Americans sought. He’d spent more than a decade from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s as a counselor at the French embassy in Washington.

  “We still meet once a year,” he said, “usually in Paris at a dinner and lecture at the American embassy. But every so often we come back here to Washington where it all began.”

  “I think it’s incredible you still get together after all these years,” I said.

  “Ah, but it was an incredible time when friends helped friends. America built much goodwill in the world with its generous wallet and kind heart. A respected nation the whole world once emulated.” He paused. “So much has changed since then.”

  I thought he’d emphasized “once” ever so slightly. We were driving along Route 28, farmland until high-tech businesses moved in and transformed it into a busy industrial corridor near the airport. A large American flag snapped from a pole in front of a mirrored glass and stone building belonging to a company that designed computer programs used in the defense industry. I watched Pépé’s eyes follow the flag as we passed.

  “I guess the world is a lot more complicated now,” I said.

  His eyes were no longer smiling. “Indeed it is.”

  I thought I could persuade my grandfather to rest before dinner once we arrived at Highland House, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Instead he wanted a tour of the house, which he hadn’t seen since I’d restored it after the fire. I showed him the furniture I’d salvaged—possessions he and my grandmother had given my mother from the small château they owned outside Paris so she’d have furniture from home for her new life in Virginia. But he also admired the newer things I’d added to replace what had been destroyed—the hand-colored prints of Virginia wildflowers, the Shaker chairs, the carpet handmade by a woman in Georgia.

  “The house has your charm and your stamp on it now, ma belle. Chantal would be proud of what you’ve done here, especially the way you are running the vineyard.”

  Pépé didn’t often speak of my mother ever since her death seven years ago when Orion, her horse, inexplicably threw her as she and my sister Mia jumped one of the low stacked-stone walls on our farm. I knew he still grieved deeply.

  “We could visit her while you’re here, if you’d like,” I said. My mother’s grave was next to Leland’s in the family cemetery. I’d also placed a small cross at the site where she died.

  He laid a hand on my shoulder and for the first time since he arrived I felt his fatigue. “I would like to go there,” he said.

  We did not speak about her again, but later I saw him take a snow-white handkerchief from his pocket, when I’m sure he thought I wasn’t looking, and dab his eyes. My heart ached for him.

  On our way to dinner at the Goose Creek Inn I told him about Joe and Dominique calling off their engagement, betting my cousin hadn’t mentioned it. He looked startled. She hadn’t.

  “They have been engaged for such a long time,” he said. “What happened?”

  “I think her workaholic habits finally got to him,” I said. “But I suspect there’s more to it because Joe started going out with another woman right away. A few days ago his new girlfriend’s car went off the road into Goose Creek and she died. Somebody removed the lug nuts from one of her tires and she apparently lost control of the car. The sheriff is investigating but so far they haven’t arrested anyone.”

  “Do they suspect Dominique?” Pépé asked.

  “Good God, no! I never even thought of that. But I know they’re talking to Joe. He, uh, spent the night with the woman—Valerie Beauvais—before she was killed.”

  “How is your cousin handling all this news?”

  “Not well,” I said. “And, to be honest, I’m not sure she knows yet about Joe staying with Valerie.”

  “Then we must protect her,” he said.

  “And you must act like you don’t know anything until she tells you.”

  “Ma puce,” he said, “I have spent my entire career in the diplomatic service. I have pretended ignorance in front of kings and generals and dictators when it was necessary. I can handle your cousin.”

  I smiled. “I’m sure you can.”

  But he did look predictably annoyed when Dominique fussed over him as we arrived at the restaurant, fretting that he looked too tired to be out so late and promising we’d be served immediately so he could go home and right to bed. The first chance he got when she wasn’t looking, he rolled his eyes at me and winked. Then no sooner did she bring us to her table and seated us when she flew off to solve a crisis in the kitchen.

  “She needs a holiday,” Pépé said to me. “She will kill herself if she doesn’t take some time off. I don’t think she looks well at all.”

  “She’s chain-smoking again. I think she started when she and Joe broke up.”

  We ordered after she returned to the table. Dominique handed our grandfather the wine list.

  “Are you going to choose a Burgundy, Pépé?” she asked, smiling.

  In the 1930s two Frenchmen from the town of Nuits-Saint-Georges in Burgundy founded a society known as the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin—the Brotherhood of the Knights of Wine-tasters—in order to help the wines of that region survive an economic crisis. After the war my grandfather had become a member of this elite group and he knew his wines.

  “I think we’ll have a Clos de Vougeot with dinner,” he said after consulting with us about our main courses. “And une coupe de champagne as an aperitif.” He glanced at Dominique over the top of his reading glasses. “Dinner is on me.”

  “It’s my restaurant—” Dominique said.

  “I know that. But I am taking you both out to dinner.”

  “You can’t—”

  I kicked her under the table. “Thank you,” I said. “That’s very kind. We’re delighted to accept.”

  He beamed. “My pleasure. I don’t often have the opportunity to dine with my beautiful granddaughters any more.”

  Ryan Worth showed up as the sommelier arrived to uncork our dinner wine.

  “Evening, all,” he said. “Celebrating something? Excellent choice of wine.”

  Dominique introduced Pépé, who stood and shook Ryan’s hand. “My grandfather, Luc Delaunay,” she said. “Visiting from Paris.”

  “Didn’t mean to interrupt a family gathering,” Ryan said. “I’m here to have dinner with Shane Cunningham and that delicious-looking California wine buyer he’s going out with.”

  “I saw her when she came in with Shane,” Dominique said. “She’s stunning.”

  I looked from Dominique to Ryan. “You’re talking about Nicole Martin?” My voice rose and the couple at the next table stopped talking to stare at us. Dominique touched a finger to her lips and frowned. I lowered my voice. “She’s a wine buyer?”

  “Since you seem to have met her, I’m surprised you didn’t know,” Ryan said. “She’s in town to buy the Washington bottle.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Dead serious.” He looked puzzled. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell you. She’s a private buyer for über-rich collectors, mostly from
California. Some client with pockets all the way to China told her not to come home from your auction without it. She’s quite the barracuda when she goes after something from what I hear.” He straightened his tie, suddenly self-conscious. “Shane said she’d like to pick my brain about that bottle.”

  “I bet she would,” I said.

  “Sorry to dash, but they’re waiting. Excuse me, folks.” He switched to French and said to Pépé, “You seem to have excellent taste in wine, sir, so perhaps you’d be interested in knowing that I’m the wine critic for the Washington Tribune. It’s one of our better-known American newspapers. My column is syndicated in more than two hundred papers throughout the country. A connoisseur like yourself might be interested in some of my reviews.”

  I avoided making eye contact with my grandfather. Dominique had a brief fit of coughing.

  “I’m sure I would learn a lot from you, Mr. Worth,” Pépé said. “I’ll ask my granddaughters for copies so I can read them while I’m here.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll pull together a few recent ones and give them to Lucie. She can pass them along to you,” he said. “At the risk of sounding immodest, they’re quite good.”

  He left and Dominique and I grinned. “You were very polite,” Dominique said. “You’ve probably forgotten more about wine than he knows.”

  “I hope his reviews are better than his French,” Pépé said. “Il parle français comme une vache espagnole.” I covered my smile with my hand at a uniquely French insult. He’d said Ryan spoke French like a Spanish cow. “As for you, ma chère Dominique, just since I’ve been here you are too busy to stay at the table with us for longer than a few minutes and you look exhausted. I’ll have you know the old man has forgotten nothing. And you, Lucie, what Washington wine? What auction? You’ve said nothing to me about this.”

  He raised an eyebrow, waiting for explanations. Our grandfather may have feigned polite ignorance with dictators, but his own flesh and blood didn’t get off so easily.

  “I’ll go first,” I said to Dominique, letting her off the hook.

  The auction intrigued him, especially Jack’s donation of the Margaux. I avoided mentioning Valerie’s remark about its provenance in front of my cousin because I didn’t want to involve Joe. I’d tell him about it later. But I did say that Jack had no idea where the bottle came from.

  “Jack Greenfield said he found it in a wine cellar belonging to his family’s import-export business after his father passed away,” I said. “In Freiburg. He told me the bottle is in such poor condition because whoever possessed it before he did didn’t take care of it.”

  Pépé shrugged. “I find that quite plausible. A lot of the wine-producing châteaus didn’t keep records of where their wines were sold until recently, nor modernize the way you Americans have done. Don’t forget, until the 1950s some vineyards were still using cattle to plow their fields.”

  He paused to let that sink in.

  “Wherever it came from,” he said, “it’s an extraordinary donation, even if the wine has turned. The person who acquires it will possess a memory bottle connected with two of your most famous Founding Fathers. The value is inestimable.”

  “A memory bottle,” I said. “I’ve never heard that before.”

  “Every year on our wedding anniversary your grandmother and I drank a bottle of Clos du Vougeot from the year we were married. It’s what we drank at our wedding reception. We called it our memory bottle.”

  “You never told us that,” Dominique said.

  “I think it’s very romantic,” I said.

  “It was.” Pépé smiled. “And of course there is such a strong link between wine and memory. I’m sure you both know that. Most of what people think they taste in wine is actually what they smell. Because scent is the strongest of the five senses, it can trigger memories we’d scarcely remember otherwise.” He picked up his wineglass. “Who knows when we’ll be together again, mes enfants? I think we should drink our own memory bottle tonight.”

  We touched glasses. I drank, but there was a lump in my throat. Dominique brushed something out of her eye. Though he seemed hale and hearty, I knew that it had been my grandfather’s gentle way of reminding us he was slowing down and would not always be with us.

  I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of my wine, willing myself to memorize that link to this night and to him. When I opened them, I saw Dominique was doing the same. Our eyes met across the table.

  Hers, like mine, were filled with nostalgia and melancholy.

  When we got home, Pépé went directly to bed. I’d given him the room Dominique had lived in when she came to help take care of Mia after my mother died. After the fire, I’d gotten rid of the swimming pool–sized chafing dishes, sixty-cup coffee urns, and door-sized platters Dominique had stored in there for her catering business, turning it into a proper guest room.

  The Jefferson diary lay open on my bedside table next to Valerie’s book. I picked it up and leafed through the Foreword, which discussed Jefferson’s tour in the vineyards of France, Italy, and Germany, and a brief trip to Holland, explaining that the trip was partly to quell an insatiable curiosity in everything around him and partly to indulge a lifelong passion for wine.

  The diary itself was an almost encyclopedic catalog of everything Jefferson saw and did. I turned to the section on Bordeaux. He’d spent five days in the region from May 24–28, 1787, after passing through Italy. By then he was on his way back to Paris, wrapping up the first of his two voyages.

  Jefferson wrote about the countryside in Bordeaux, naming four vineyards in the region which he said were “of the first quality”—Château Haut-Brion, Château Latour, Château Lafite, and Château Margaux. More than two hundred years later, it was clear Thomas Jefferson had known his stuff. In 1855, at Napoleon III’s insistence, the French instituted a classification system for French wine still used today. The four vineyards Jefferson listed in his diary were awarded premier cru or “first-growth” status, making them the top wines in France.

  Jefferson’s last Bordeaux entry dealt with wine merchants. After listing the principal English and French wine sellers, he wrote,

  Desgrands, a wine broker, tells me they never mix the wines of first quality but that they mix the inferior ones to improve them.

  He was talking about blending—a practice used by forgers who mixed wines from different regions and even different countries, occasionally throwing in a little port, to produce a cocktail that could fool someone into believing they were drinking a first-class wine. All the wines Jack had donated were first quality, except the Dorgon. Had that one been blended, as Jefferson implied? If it had, how would I ever know?

  Valerie had hinted that what she knew was significant. Whether or not the Dorgon was a mishmash of several inferior wines didn’t seem that earth-shattering. I put the diary back on my bedside table.

  I slept badly again. My nightgown chafed the cuts on my back, my skin felt like it had been stretched taut over my bones, and the bruises, now purple and green, were a lurid reminder of Valerie’s death.

  Something about what Jefferson had written in his diary bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  And the only two people who could help me—Thomas Jefferson and Valerie Beauvais—were dead.

  Chapter 10

  The next morning when I woke, I heard snoring through the door of Pépé’s bedroom. At home in Paris he never rose before midafternoon. With the jet lag—and how little sleep he’d gotten yesterday—I wondered if he’d stay in bed all day.

  I made breakfast and set another place for him at the kitchen table, leaving a note that he could find croissants in the bread bin and cheese in the refrigerator. Usually he fasted for breakfast and lunch, making dinner his main meal, but maybe he’d make an exception since he was adjusting to the time change.

  I drove to the winery and parked next to Quinn’s El. The door to the villa was locked, so he was probably in the barrel room. I found him there, punchi
ng down the cap with Manolo and Jesús. The two workers smiled and said hello. Quinn barely looked up, mumbling “good morning” before going back to his task. I stood and watched, growing angrier by the second as I waited for some sign from him that we had some air-clearing to do. Instead he doggedly pushed the sludgy mass of grape skins below the surface of one of the fermenting vats with a large flat paddle and ignored me. I saw Jesús’s uneasy glance in Manolo’s direction. Manolo shook his head lightly.

  No need to keep them in the middle of this.

  “I’d like to see you in my office as soon as you’re done here, Quinn.” All three of them were bigger and taller and older than I was. I sounded like a student teacher in over her head, trying to discipline an unruly pupil. No one looked at me.

  “In case you’ve forgotten, I own this vineyard,” I said. “When I say something I don’t expect to be ignored.”

  This time they all stopped what they were doing.

  Manolo and Jesús nodded nervously. Quinn’s head jerked up and his eyes locked on mine. I couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed or furious I’d spoken to him like that in front of the men, but his machismo was his problem and too damn bad if he’d lost face. When I left the barrel room I closed the door harder than I needed to.

  I still hadn’t cooled off when I got to the villa. Gina flew out of the kitchen, holding a pot of coffee. Her eyes were huge.

  “Oh, it’s you, Lucie. I heard the door bang shut. Guess a gust of wind must have caught it.” She stopped and stared at me. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  If it had been Frankie with her calming, compassionate ways, I probably would have spilled everything. But not to lively, gossipy Gina, who began far too many sentences with, “I’m not supposed to tell you, but…”

  Sharing a confidence with her wasn’t quite as bad as telling Thelma Johnson over at the General Store or the Romeos, but it would still make the rounds. The only difference was that everybody in two counties wouldn’t know by the end of the day. More than likely it would take a week or two.